Free, open-source resources for the healthcare sector on climate adaptation

In 2024, NHSE North West, NHSE North East & Yorkshire, and NHS Greater Manchester (GM) teamed up with two independent organisations with expertise in public sector adaptation, Verture and Sustainability West Midlands, for a project that developed multiple resources, piloted two different training courses, consulted and engaged staff across multiple northern NHS organisations, and started building a business case for wider climate change adaptation in the NHS.

Drawing from a model developed for the public sector in Scotland, this resource provides a holistic approach to organisational change, centred around the development of four key capabilities. These are broken down into a series of practical, actionable tasks suitable for any NHS organisation to progress their ability to understand, prepare for and respond to climate change and its impacts. This has now been adopted as official guidance by NHS England.

Using this resource helps you improve your capability in:

• Understanding the Challenge
• Organisational Culture and Resources
• Planning and Implementation
• Working Together

As part of the same project that led to the development of the Climate Adaptation Framework for NHS Organisations in England, SWM and Verture also developed the following:

• A second document with further guidance on the Framework
• An Adaptation Plan Template for NHS Trusts
• Guidance on including adaptation in your Green Plan and other NHS reporting guidance
• Two training courses for operational staff and senior leaders in the NHS
• An NHS organisation engaged during the pilot project has also produced a downloadable spreadsheet for marking your own progress against the framework.

A webinar was held on 30 July 2024 to share the activities, resources, and learnings from the project. Watch a recording of this webinar here:

Sustainability West Midlands collaborated with our local Environment Agency team in 2023 to produce a suite of resources to start Trusts on their adaptation journey, including a toolkit that takes them through a step by step process to enable effective adaptation in their Trust, ICB or ICS.

This series of resources, collectively known as ‘Adapt to Survive,’ provides:

• An Excel-based toolkit to take Trusts through a process to produce an adaptation plan, including how to assess risks, identify impacts and adaptation solutions.
• A guidance document taking users through the above tool and providing further guidance and resources, and how adaptation links with existing NHS healthcare and emergency planning priorities.
• Video tutorials explaining how to use the toolkit.
• A compendium of case studies showing what adaptation good practice looks like in NHS Trusts, in order to catalyse action in other Trusts.